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Tuesday, August 14, 2012

I've been talking about the injury to my foot for a while. It's PF pain, and it's also on the top of my foot (which is basically arthritis or tendinitis all coming from my wonky feet). So, I didn't know how this race was going to go, and I felt a sense of dread at the starting line.

I ran a pretty great race here last year, so that was on my side, but it was still not good.

My first mile, which was just running around Goucher College, I did 10:30, which was pretty great, but I was already in pain. We left the college and headed out on the the hilly, ridiculous surrounding area. It was hot and humid, so that wasn't a great thing. And the hills. Oh, the hills. I've done very little hill training lately, compared to normal, and I've been doing so much non-running, that I just couldn't handle those hills in that heat.

I was getting passed and passed and passed. I'm not going to lie, mentally, I could not handle the number of people that were passing me. I knew my time was going to be abysmal, and I was definitely feeling pain both in my plantar fascia and on the top of my foot. Finally, about 3 1/2 miles in, we went up this GIANT hill that I remember toughing it through last year. But, this year, I walked. When I got to the top, I was worn out and hot, and I had some foot pain and I just didn't want to destroy my foot or do further damage for this race that meant nothing and I was clearly going to do terrible for anyway.

So, I flagged down a volunteer who drove me to the finish line.

It was so embarrassing. I've never DNF'd before. Having to tell people what happened was miserable. To make matters worse, I agreed to go out to breakfast after, and it really stunk listening to everyone talk about the race - and give me advice on my foot and whatever. This was over a week ago, and things are actually doing better (I'll update later), but this race was definitely my low point.

I have a pretty tough race coming up at the end of the month - The Annapolis Ten Miler - and I don't know if I'll be able to do it or not. We'll see.